Oleg Deripaska, Sanctioned Russian Oligarch with Ties to Trump Campaign
Photo source: Dmitry Azarov/Kommersant, via Getty Images
The Daily Caller published an op-ed authored by Oleg Deripaska on March 8, 2018, criticizing the Mueller special counsel investigation into past and current Russian interference into U.S. elections. Less than a month later, he and his companies have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for being among " those who benefit from the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia's malign activities."
Deripaska described the infrastructure of long-term professionals in the U.S. government, composed of experts in their fields who remain in their positions regardless of who is in the White House, as the "Deep State." He described the Deep State as "shadow power exercised by a small number of individuals from media, business, government and the intelligence community, foisting provocative and cynically false manipulations on the public. Out of these manipulations, an agenda of these architects' own design is born."
As a result of the sanctions imposed April 6,2018, Deripaska's companies EN+ Group and Rusal, listed on the London stock exchange, have lost significant stock value: 20 percent for En+ Group and 12 percent for Rusal.
Deripaska has been unable to travel to the U.S. since 2005, when he was denied a visa due to his ties to organized crime and his role as a suspect in the murder of businessman Vadim Yafyasov.
Oleg Deripaska is a longtime associate of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign chairman in the spring and summer of 2016. Deripaska hired Manafort in 2006, for $10 million per year, to provide positive public relations messaging for Vladimir Putin in the United States. This relationship continued for a number of years.
Deripaska sued Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, who are both now under indictment on federal money laundering and conspiracy charges, in the Cayman Islands in 2015.
Manafort continued to contact Deripaska through Konstantin Kilimnick, believed to be an officer of Russian security services. (John Schindler, security expert and former National Security Agency analyst, discussed Kilimnick here.)
Deripaska's private jet, with tail letters M-ALAY, visited the U.S. in August of 2016, shortly after the Republican National Committee declared Donald Trump the Republican nominee for president. According to independent reporter Scott Stedman and the Washington Post, Kilimnick and Manafort had dinner at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City on August 2. Deripaska's jet landed in New Jersey, a short distance from the dinner, hours after the meeting concluded. The plane took off again the following evening and flew back to Moscow. It then ferried Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko to Deripaska's private yacht in Norway for a meeting with Deripaska. Alexy Navalny, Russian political leader who was prevented from running in the recent presidential election, released a video with details about this secret meeting.
An article from the Telegraph newspaper from 2012 describes some of the evidence of Deripaska's ties to the global mob.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/9387913/Oligarch-linked-to-politicians-ordered-murder-of-banker.html
Deripaska sued the Associated Press over reporting asserting that Deripaska had hired Manafort for years. In December 2017 Deripaska dropped the libel suit.
https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/12/06/oleg-deripaska-libel-suit-associated-press-283767
An article from October 2017 in the Atlantic profiled Manafort and highlighted his connections to Deripaska.
Photo source: PHOTOSHOT
Minority House Intelligence Memo Reveals That 5 Members of Trump Campaign Were Under FBI Investigation in September 2016
A memo written by the Democratic minority of the House Intelligence Committee, released Saturday with the approval of the FBI and Department of Justice, disputes the narrative put forth in the memo released February 2 by the supposedly-recused Republican chairman of the committee, Representative Devin Nunes.
The rebuttal memo primarily deals with the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant and two extensions that the Department of Justice obtained on Carter Page, foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The Nunes memo asserted that the FBI and Department of Justice improperly obtained the FISA warrant by using information contained in the report of a British citizen working for an American company hired by individuals politically aligned with Hillary Clinton.
Page was already known to investigators before he joined the Trump campaign, due to several instances of Russian operatives attempting to recruit Page to spy for the Russian government.
An important passage in the rebuttal memo explains that by September 2016,
"... the FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into [redacted] individuals linked to the Trump campaign: [redacted] and former campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page. As Committee testimony bears out, the FBI would have continued its investigation, including against [redacted] individuals, even if it had never received information from Steele, never applied for a FISA warrant against Page, or if the FISC had rejected the application."
Footnote 7 in the memo reveals what is likely the list of Trump campaign officials who were, as of September 2016, under investigation by the FBI. mo makes clear that five members of the Trump campaign were under investigation by the FBI for being probable agents of the Russian government:
Foreign Policy advisor Carter Page
Campaign advisor Michael Flynn, who was considered as a vice presidential running mate, then became National Security Advisor briefly, before resigning or being fired in February 2017
Foreign policy advisory panel member George Papadopoulos
Campaign manager Paul Manafort
Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates.
To understand how this information fits into the picture of what we now know about the Trump campaign and possible interference by Russia in the election, it is necessary to go back to the confusing months around the 2016 election and look at the timeline.
July 5, 2016: FBI Director James Comey held a press conference at which he announced that the investigation into Hillary Clinton was closed and they would not press charges. In Comey's words: "I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest."
September 2016: Five high-level members of the Trump campaign were under investigation by the FBI for being possible Russian agents.
October 28, 2016: FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congressional committee head stating that the investigation into Hillary Clinton's misuse of a private email server was reopened less than two weeks before the election. The FBI had found Clinton emails on a laptop computer involved in the criminal investigation into Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton's aide.
Also October 28, 2016: Rep. Jason Chaffetz, head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sends a message on Twitter announcing the reopening of the investigation:
"FBI Dir just informed me, 'The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.' Case reopened"
The Comey letter was released on Twitter 19 minutes later by Fox News analyst Brit Hume.
October 31, 2016: The New York Times published an article by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers entitled, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." That article describes some of the frustration of Democrats like Senator Harry Reid, who expressed his concern to the FBI in a letter released the day before the article was published:
​"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information."
Also October 31, 2016: The day that article appeared, an article by David Corn was published in Mother Jones that should have gotten more attention, but was overshadowed by the Times article. This article was titled, "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump." (This information was compiled into what has become known as the Steele Dossier.)
Clearly, there was evidence in October 2016 that the Trump campaign needed to be investigated, and was in fact under investigation.
November 6, 2016: The reopened investigation into Clinton's emails is closed two days before the election.
November 8, 2016: Donald Trump wins the presidency by securing more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton.
I have some questions:
Why did the FBI tell the American people about the Clinton investigation, but not about the investigation into high-level Trump campaign officials?
Why did the FBI find Clinton emails, which turned out to be copies of emails the FBI had already seen, end up on Anthony Weiner's laptop?
Why did Jason Chaffetz announce on Twitter that the investigation into Clinton was reopened?
​Where did Brit Hume get the letter to Congressional members?
The minority memo from the House Intelligence Committee can be read here.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4387022/Democrats-memo-rebutting-Republican-claims-of.pdf
The letter sent to Congressional committee heads announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation can be seen here.
The New York Times article from October 31, 2016 can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html
The Mother Jones article from the same day can be found here.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/
The announcement of the FBI closing the Clinton investigation July 5, 2016 can be found here.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system​
Note: Thanks to former CIA officer Ned Price for pointing out the information contained in Footnote 7.
Manafort, Gates, and Papadopoulos - What Happened Today
This morning Special Counsel Robert Mueller III revealed charges against three Trump campaign operatives.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner and fellow campaign operative Richard Gates surrendered to the FBI this morning and registered pleas of not guilty in federal court this afternoon. They are under home confinement and have surrendered their passports. The pair have been charged with 12 separate felony counts, including money laundering and conspiracy against the United States.
Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony count of lying to the FBI on October 5. The indictment was unsealed today in a surprising twist. Papadopoulos was arrested July 27 and agreed to cooperate with the FBI.
Manafort is a longtime Republican operative whose lobbying firm with Roger Stone, Charles Black, Jr., and Peter Kelly has worked for some of the world's most notorious dictators. He offered his services to the Trump campaign and reportedly worked for free as campaign manager from March to August 2016. He resigned two days after news reports revealed that he may have received more than $12 million from Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Putin Ukrainian dictator who fled Ukraine in 2014.
The 12 felony counts for Manafort and Gates have been annotated by The Washington Post and can be found here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/30/the-paul-manafort-and-rick-gates-indictment-annotated/?utm_term=.0cb118129c80
A timeline of events related to Paul Manafort's political career can be found here.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/30/who-is-paul-manafort-a-brief-timeline-of-his-political-career.html
A profile of Rick Gates from June 2017 can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/rick-gates-russia.html
A timeline of events related to the Papadopoulos charges can be found here.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-timeline-george-papadopoulos-indictment-20171030-htmlstory.html
The Papadopoulos indictment and the Manafort/Gates indictment can be found below.
Paul Manafort Is Under Investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department
In February, multiple news outlets reported that Paul Manafort's daughter appears to have been the victim of a cyber attack that exposed a blackmail attempt on Manafort while he was serving as Donald Trump's campaign chairman.
The texts show that Ukrainian lawmaker Sergei Leschenko claimed to have evidence of Manafort's business dealings with ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, and of a meeting between Trump and Yanukovych associate Serhiy Tulub.
(Photo Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images )
Now Manafort has a new scandal to worry about. The Associated Press reported exclusively Thursday that agents of the Treasury Department have obtained information relating to Manafort's transactions at the Bank of Cyprus, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The Treasury Department is pursuing an investigation into corruption Manafort may have been involved with in Ukraine.
Paul Manafort worked as campaign chairman for the Trump campaign from March until August of 2016. He was instrumental in shepherding the candidate through the critical time before, during, and after the Republican National Convention. He has also been a focus of the FBI investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign and administration coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.
Manafort, active in the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole, has also lobbied on behalf of many dictators around the world. He has worked for guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi of Angola, Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Viktor Yanukovych, Russian-backed former leader of Ukraine.
Federal prosecutors have been interested in Manafort's finances since it was discovered that a ledger belonging to Yanukovych contained an entry showing he had made secret payments to Manafort. The payments appear to have been made in 2009.
Cyprus is known to have been a haven for money laundering by Russian billionaires.
Manafort is not the only Trump team member with ties to the Bank of Cyprus. According to The Guardian, Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary, presided over a deal with Artem Avetisyan, a Russian banker with ties to Vladimir Putin and Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, in 2015. At the time, Sberbank was under U.S. and European Union sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The Associated Press story about the investigation into Manafort's connections to the Bank of Cyprus can be found here.
https://www.apnews.com/d43ef4166da6400ab45140978854bbbb
The Guardian article about connections of Wilbur Ross to deals with Russia and the Bank of Cyprus can be found here.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/wilbur-ross-russian-deal-bank-of-cyprus-donald-trump-commerce-secretary
The article from Politico from February, describing the cyberattack on Manafort's daughter, can be found here.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/paul-manafort-blackmail-russia-trump-235275
A clip from 1989 in which Paul Manafort admits to influence peddling during an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/archival-video-1989-paul-manafort-admits-influence-pedaling-38310079
A Politico article detailing Manafort's ties to Ukraine and to Moscow can be found here.
http://www.politifact.com/global-news/article/2016/may/02/paul-manafort-donald-trumps-top-adviser-and-his-ti/